It really depends on how the teleportation works. If it’s folding spacetime to make it so that I can step instantaneously through the gap, that’s definitely still me. If it’s just like a portal cutting temporarily through Hell ala WH40k or Event Horizon, it’s probably still me, but I might be suffering from demonic posession. If I’m being completely atomized, converted to electricity, and transmitted to the other tube to be reconstituted as an exact copy, then I am a copy.
IMO, even the digitally sent person could be the original, depending on the philosophical concepts being applied (same ship of theseus style questions). If it’s just the process of reading your atoms to that level of detail that makes you disappear, and the only information that is literally ‘you’ is being transferred over and reconstituted in a similarly one-way-by-function process, it’s almost more of a phase shift to digital and back than a copy. Pretty much just side-stepping matter’s inability to travel without acceleration.
If the machine is basically ‘digesting’ the person only to send over the results for reproduction, though… that’s definitely a copy. Pretty sure Trek describes their transporters as the latter? They’re definitely killing a bunch of people in that show. ha Though to answer it with any kind of conclusive result, I’d think we’d need a technical description for how it works, and it cannot exist, so… lol
the thing is though, everyone older than like a year is already a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy… Our bodies are the ship of theseus, it’s only by pure statistical inevitability that some handfull of atoms inside us are the exact same ones we were born with.
It really depends on how the teleportation works. If it’s folding spacetime to make it so that I can step instantaneously through the gap, that’s definitely still me. If it’s just like a portal cutting temporarily through Hell ala WH40k or Event Horizon, it’s probably still me, but I might be suffering from demonic posession. If I’m being completely atomized, converted to electricity, and transmitted to the other tube to be reconstituted as an exact copy, then I am a copy.
IMO, even the digitally sent person could be the original, depending on the philosophical concepts being applied (same ship of theseus style questions). If it’s just the process of reading your atoms to that level of detail that makes you disappear, and the only information that is literally ‘you’ is being transferred over and reconstituted in a similarly one-way-by-function process, it’s almost more of a phase shift to digital and back than a copy. Pretty much just side-stepping matter’s inability to travel without acceleration.
If the machine is basically ‘digesting’ the person only to send over the results for reproduction, though… that’s definitely a copy. Pretty sure Trek describes their transporters as the latter? They’re definitely killing a bunch of people in that show. ha Though to answer it with any kind of conclusive result, I’d think we’d need a technical description for how it works, and it cannot exist, so… lol
the thing is though, everyone older than like a year is already a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy… Our bodies are the ship of theseus, it’s only by pure statistical inevitability that some handfull of atoms inside us are the exact same ones we were born with.